Free Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Page B

bought the household items, she bought him a comb and a shirt. She taught him to cook fried rice with green peppers and diced carrots, asked him not to cook beans until they became pudding, not to douse things in oil, not to be too sparing with salt. Although she had noticed his body odor the first time she saw him, she let a few days pass before she gavehim some scented powder for his armpits and asked him to use two capfuls of Dettol in his bath water. He looked pleased when he sniffed the powder, and she wondered if he could tell that it was a feminine scent. She wondered, too, what he really thought of her. There was clearly affection, but there was also a quiet speculation in his eyes, as if he was holding her up to something. And she worried that she came out lacking.
    He finally started to speak Igbo to her on the day she rearranged the photos on the wall. A wall gecko had scuttled out from behind the wood-framed photo of Odenigbo in a graduating gown, and Ugwu shouted,
“Egbukwala!
Don’t kill it!”
    “What?” She turned to glance down at him from the chair she was standing on.
    “If you kill it you will get a stomachache,” he said. She found his Opi dialect funny, the way he seemed to spit the words out.
    “Of course we won’t kill it. Let’s hang the photo on that wall.”
    “Yes, mah,” he said, and then began to tell her, in Igbo, how his sister Anulika had suffered a terrible stomachache after killing a gecko.
    Olanna felt less of a visitor in the house when Odenigbo came back; he pulled her forcefully, kissed her, pressed her to him.
    “You should eat first,” she said.
    “I know what I want to eat.”
    She laughed. She felt ridiculously happy.
    “What’s happened here?” Odenigbo asked, looking around the room. “All the books on that shelf?”
    “Your older books are in the second bedroom. I need the space for
my
books.”
    “Ezi okwu?
You’ve really moved in, haven’t you?” Odenigbo was laughing.
    “Go and have a bath,” she said.
    “And what was that flowery scent on my good man?”
    “I gave him a scented talcum powder. Didn’t you notice his body odor?”
    “That’s the smell of villagers. I used to smell like that until I left Abba to go to secondary school. But you wouldn’t know about things like that.” His tone was gently teasing. But his hands were not gentle. They were unbuttoning her blouse, freeing her breast from a bra cup. She was not sure how much time had passed, but she was tangled in bed with Odenigbo, warm and naked, when Ugwu knocked to say they had visitors.
    “Can’t they leave?” she murmured.
    “Come,
nkem,”
Odenigbo said. “I can’t wait for them to meet you.”
    “Let’s stay here just a little longer.” She ran her hand over the curly hair on his chest, but he kissed her and got up to look for his underwear.
    Olanna dressed reluctantly and went out to the living room.
    “My friends, my friends,” Odenigbo announced, with an exaggerated flourish, “this, finally, is Olanna.”
    The woman, who was tuning the radiogram, turned and took Olanna’s hand. “How are you?” she asked. Her head was wrapped in a bright orange turban.
    “I’m well,” Olanna said. “You must be Lara Adebayo.”
    “Yes,” Miss Adebayo said. “He did not tell us that you were illogically pretty.”
    Olanna stepped back, flustered for a moment. “I will take that as a compliment.”
    “And what a proper English accent,” Miss Adebayo murmured, with a pitying smile, before turning back to the radiogram. She had a compact body, a straight back that looked straighter in her stiff orange-print dress, the body of a questioner whom one dared not question back.
    “I’m Okeoma,” the man with the tangled mop of uncombedhair said. “I thought Odenigbo’s girlfriend was a human being; he didn’t say you were a water mermaid.”
    Olanna laughed, grateful for the warmth in Okeoma’s expression and the way he held her hand for a little too long. Dr. Patel